Afghan opium farmers' anger at West threatens crop controls

By Tom Coghlan in Hafi Zan

12:01AM BST 31 Aug 2005

For decades a red carpet of poppies covered the dusty fields of Nangarhar - now wheat and maize sway in the rare breezes of a baking Afghan summer. But the farmers who have abandoned the poppy crop in the face of a British-led campaign against drugs complain that the rural economy has collapsed.

Nangarhar, east of Kabul, could be portrayed as a success story. Last year it was in the top three Afghan provinces for poppy cultivation. This year production is down by 80 per cent.

In Kabul this week, Antonio Maria Costa, of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, said that such progress was proof that Afghanistan's enormous narcotics trade "can be constrained". As part of the campaign, local farmers, many of whom earned what in Afghanistan is the huge sum of £8,000 a year from the crop, were cowed with threats and suborned with pledges of aid. Now they feel betrayed. "Poppy is food, medicine, health, clothes, all aspects of life. It was everything for us," said Del Afgha, a former opium farmer from Hafi Zan, tugging at his ragged clothes. "We were promised an alternative to poppy. But I can only feed my family for five months from what I have grown."

At the entrance to the village a huge metal sign emblazoned with US and Afghan flags announced the recent completion of five deep wells funded by foreign aid. "The foreigners are trying," said a villager. "But it is not enough."

The whole of Nangarhar province has been blitzed in an onslaught on drugs that has cost the international community almost $1 billion (£550 million). Britain alone, officially the lead nation in the struggle to cut off what is the source of 87 per cent of the world's opium, has contributed £55 million to the struggle. The Government has championed the need for an alternative livelihood for the farmers while hawks in Washington have favoured a tougher approach, such as spraying crops with poison.

But if Hafi Zan is the yardstick for measuring the West's success in stopping opium production and building a prosperous new Afghanistan, much work still lies ahead.

Villagers estimated that 60 per cent of Hafi Zan's economy had disappeared. The local mason, butcher and fruit seller have all gone out of business. "Our village has lost almost all of its income," said one of the elders in another village nearer the Pakistan border. "We have no choice. This coming year we will plant opium again and this time the whole tribe is agreed that we will fight. We are ready to die."

Dozens of huge sacks piled up near the market in Shinwari turned out to be filled with poppy heads, their sides scored with the razor marks showing they had been harvested for opium.

Afghanistan's counter narcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, boasted this week that the country had "definitely turned the corner" in the battle on drugs and thanked farmers. But without more material expressions of gratitude, there is no guarantee that Nangarhar will obey the government for much longer.